Not lack of effort. Lack of resources. You can't claim that there is money there, and then go almost two years without making any additions. Well, you can, but you're either awful at your job or lying about money being there.
I'm not even sure what would be worse, management having lied about payroll space, or management having payroll space and still being too ineffective to acquire someone with more than a $3 million salary over the last 18 months.
I honestly don't think there's a sound argument for choosing Brantley over Trout. Trout has been clearly and significantly better offensively, and plays CF as least as well (and probably better) than Brantley. Saying Brantley should win just seems like someone trying to be contrary.
I feel like people would have been debating walks in the same way 15-20 years ago when people were realizing that getting on base is important. I think everyone was taken by surprise when people started throwing around numbers like 20 and 30 runs above replacement-level for top framers. It didn't feel right, until you looked closer and wondered why you hadn't really thought about it before.
Walks weren't seen as being valuable until they were. Neither was framing. I guess the only difference is that the framing skill has the potential to cease being relevant with the arrival of roboumps, or at least until guys like Kratz are in the majors and guys like Navarro aren't.
There's no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater though. You can disagree (legitimately IMO) with a portion of what they're doing (assigning different values to different counts), but it doesn't invalidate the entire process.
This is akin to being outraged that starting pitchers are more valuable than relievers because they throw more innings. Why not just accept it? Lucroy contributes very real runs by framing pitched well, and he should be credited for it. Until we have roboumps catchers will continue to have a huge influence on the game because they're involved in more game events than any other player.
This type of thing is exactly why nobody takes PETA seriously. They probably have legitimate issues with the zoo, but this doesn't have anything to do with the Blue Jays. I can't think of an organization that's better than PETA at shooting itself in the foot.